Much progress has been made on my next movie, The Pro Bono Watchman, starring Mike Gassaway. We have cast the very important role of 6 year old Bonnie, and she is going to be played by Kariana Karhu, who is a very up and coming child actress. She has acted in two films, and she even appeared in a Super Bowl commercial. 

I mentioned a while back that I needed to write a song for the film. And I mentioned how daunting it is to sit down at the piano with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and try to come up with something. 

And that blank piece of paper is about as daunting as looking up at Mt. Everest. And I'll tell you honestly that to me, the most curious and intriguing kind of genius that there is is the genius of musical composition. That's the kind of genius that I wish I had and which fascinates me the most. In other words, Einstein, sure, he was no slacker, but I'm much more interested in knowing what endowed George Gershwin and Irving Berlin with their talents than Albert Einstein.

But, in just that manner, with a blank piece of paper and a pencil, I did come up with a song for The Pro Bono Watchman. And in the movie, 6 year old Bonnie is going to to dance to the song for her father. It's title is: You're Loving Me Lately.

To my longstanding enemies who issue dislikes to everything I do, please restrain yourselves this time because it involves a young girl who is pouring herself into learning an elegant dance for this song. This one time, please, just don't do it. And I thank you.

Here now, after gargantuan effort, is You're Loving Me Lately. The image is that of our wonderful vocalist, Christy Mims. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXc9D2S7Cys&feature=youtu.be

 I mentioned that LIFE magazine did not include the infamous Frame 313 of the Zapruder film in its display on November 29, 1963: the fatal head shot. But, the fact is: they also did not mention the fatal head shot. Their narrative said that JFK was hit behind the sign, and then Connally was hit with a separate shot after that. And that's all they said about the shots. They mentioned nothing about JFK being shot again after an interval of time. They just said that after a while he collapsed into his wife. 

And in the frames they published- in the way they published them- it's hard to tell that anything else happened to him. And it was obviously their intent to avoid stating or implying that he was shot again.

Now, why did they do that? Was it because they were afraid they would run out of shots? They knew already that there were just 3 bullet cartridges on the 6th floor. So, they knew that the total number of shots could not exceed three. They only mentioned two, and I think that at that stage, they didn't want to commit themselves about the third shot. They wanted to leave their options open. They wanted to wait and see how the rest of the story was going to evolve. 

And I think it attests to that red splotch of 313 not being there. Because: if it were there, they would have known that a shot happened, and it would be futile to deny it. So, they would have admitted it and published it. 

Another weird thing is that they mentioned that the film shows that JFK was smiling and waving at the crowd before he passed behind the sign and got shot. But, they didn't publish any frame of him smiling and waving at the crowd.  Not a one. So, why the heck not?

It's because they had it, but it wasn't in the right form for them to use. It took a while to make it suitable. It was a picture in which he was smiling and waving high on the hill, and then he stopped smiling and waving- before he got to the sign. They didn't want that to be the story. They wanted it that he smiled and waved until he got to the sign, and then everything happened behind the sign. But, by October 1964, they had the frame reconditioned to represent what they wanted. 

So, this is the frame they published in October 1964. They didn't publish it in November 1963 because it took a long time to build this from disparate elements, rather like Mr. Potato Man. And this really is a ridiculous image. That's the top of the hill there. Those people at the top of the frame are on Houston  Street. This has got everything compacted. It's all squeezed together. There is no way that sign would intrude on an image of the top of Dealey Plaza.  They messed with this severely, but they didn't do it in November 1963. But, they had it ready by October 1964, and in it went. 

I now have the November 29, 1963 LIFE magazine with many frames from the Zapruder film, and it confirms what I have been saying. 

It contains 31 frames from the film, but they left out the most important ones- the most incriminating ones. There are two huge gaps in which they skipped over portions of the film. The first gap goes from frame 162 to 217. Note that they published grainy black and white frames in the magazine. 

So, that's the last frame they show before the limo is on the other side of the sign. But, in the film we have today, he waves at the spectators before he passes behind the sign. So, why didn't they include that? You know that I'm a screenwriter, and that wave at the crowd is a fantastic story element. Nobody would leave that out if they had it. They showed it in October '64. So, why didn't they show it in November '63? It's the most important frame prior to him disappearing behind the sign. I'm thinking that perhaps they didn't have it in November, that they had to fabricate it. 

What comes next in the existing film is JFK puts his hand over his face. Nobody talks about it, but that's what's there. 

The above isn't real. JFK didn't do that. He must have had a distraught look on his face. He was shot in the back although just with an ice dart. But, he was definitely not having a good time, so they covered up his face with that hand. I can understand why they didn't publish it- with or without a hand. The next frame they published was Z-217.

You notice that this frame doesn't show anything. They might as well have waited until we could see JFK or at least Connally. So, they probably published this just to reduce the size of the span that they were leaving out. 

The other big gap occurs from  Z-270 to Z-322.

That's right; it goes from one to the other. And that means they left out Brehm and his son, plus Jean Hill and Mary Moorman, and most importantly, they left out the fatal head shot. 

Now, why would they leave all that out? And if they had frame 313 as we know it today with the splotch of blood over the side of his face at the instant of impact, why wouldn't they include it? It must be that they didn't have it.  As I have been saying, that must have been concocted. 

All the rest of what they published shows Jackie climbing onto the back of the limo. The final published frame shows Clint Hill just starting to climb aboard. So, it's mostly just Jackie on the back of the limo. 10 published frames of Jackie on the back of the limo. 

They never mentioned Zapruder or anything about the source of the film. In their narrative, they mention JFK waving at the crowd until he disappeared behind the sign, but again, they didn't show it. Their writing about it shows that they wanted to sell it. So again, their not publishing any frames of him waving suggests strongly that they didn't have them yet. Either that, or his waving came much earlier, long before he reached the sign, which they cut out, and they had to do some very complicated film surgery, but after November 29.   

I have said many times that they did not do all the alterations to the Zapruder film in a weekend or a week. By October '64, they had a frame of JFK waving. They also had a frame that included Brehm. And they also published Z-313 with the red splotch in October '64. That should tell you that they didn't have that frame in November '63. If they could publish it in October '64, why couldn't they publish it in November '63?

So, they left out two huge swaths of the film that we have today. But, I'm sure they already did a lot of work to it. JFK still gets to the freeway sign too soon. So, that was a swath they cut out for good. It was never coming back. 

This is a great find because it shows their criminal intent to manipulate their readers and edit the story of what actually happened. And it also proves that other alterations were made after this. 

Oswald supposedly shot a single bullet that traversed the bodies of two men,  going through 15 inches of human tissue,  bursting 2 bones, and going through through 7 layers of clothing and 5 layers of skin. Yet, this guy shot a wild hog in the head with it using the same make and model rifle at only 40 yards, and it didn't even go through the hog's head. Tells you why they never tested the Single Bullet Theory using carcasses, which they easily could have done.  

I don't know exactly where the Zapruder film was altered. Some say it was at a secret CIA photo lab in Rochester NY, but it may have been at multiple places, and over a period of years. But, it was surely a top-down operation. The CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center was a euphemism. They were just as bent on photographic manipulation as interpretation. And the work that was done at this level, and with so much at stake, surely went to the top. Do you really think that CIA artists were working on the Zapruder film in Rochester without the approval of Arthur Lundahl, who was Dino Brugioni's boss at the NPIC? That Lundahl and Brugioni were bamboozled along with everyone else? The CIA is a quasi-military organization. 

So even if the work was done in Rochester, it was done under the auspices of Lundahl and Brugioni. The existence of the Zapruder film was a national security emergency, and responsibility for what to do about it had to go to the top. It wasn't done by CIA "renegades" who tricked their bosses. 

I'll draw a parallel to my research on the Moorman photo, and on that I had a physicist helping me; one with a specialty in Optics, who lectured other physicists on Optics. And he determined that the Moorman photo was taken at a diagonal angle from behind. Mary always claimed and demonstrated that she took her photo when the Kennedys were right across from her. So, photographically, her angle was perpendicular, not diagonal from behind. 

Mary said that after she went home with her photo late that Friday night, and well after dark, that they kept coming back to her to "borrow" her photo. Why did they do that, when they not only made copies, but made a negative of it? So, what did they need her original for, again and again? They needed it in order to alter it. And finally, they gave up on it and replaced it with a crop of one that was taken at a diagonal angle from behind by Babushka Lady. 

And that's when the white thumbprint went on. You don't believe the story that that was a mishap, do you? 

But, the point is that it happened over time, we need to stop thinking that the Zapruder film was edited within days. It may have begun within days; easy stuff, like removing frames to hide the slowing and near-stopping of the limo. But, when you consider the totality of what was done to the film, there is no way they did that within days. There were probably aspects of film manipulation that didn't exist, the development of which were spurred by the needs that they had. For instance, they moved the Croft people, who were African-American, who were down the hill past the Obelisk, up almost all the way to the corner.

Look at this frame 21. You see the short, AA woman in the blue dress, right? I put an arrow to her.. She is the same woman as in Croft. Look how close she is to the corner.

But, they are in different locations. In Zapruder, she is at the top of the hill, close to the intersection. In Croft, she is down below the Obelisk. Croft is the one that is accurate. But, Croft was highly manipulated too. JFK was hit in the back a split-second before Croft was taken. If you watch the Z-film closely, you can see that JFK stopped waving before he reached the freeway sign. And the Z-film shows him putting his hand over his face, which nobody ever said he did. 

But, notice that he's not waving in Croft either. And he isn't waving in the Betzner or Willis photos either, and the limo was moving. So, for all that distance, JFK had stopped waving. He was a politician on a political outing, so why would he stop waving? Because: he was shot in the back. That happened high on the hill, and the Z-film showed it, thus destroying the SBT. Hence, they had to do Frankenstinian surgery on that film. It wasn't done in a week or a month or even a year. 

This is a lot to serve-up at one time, so I'm going to quit. But, everything I have said here is rock-solid. The biggest alteration to the Zapruder film was cutting out a huge swath of JFK riding down that hill shot in the back. The area of the plat in red is the part that they cut out of the Zapruder film, which they did because it showed him reacting to being shot in the back, where he stopped smiling and waving and acquired that "quizzical" look on his face that Jackie described.  

This is the infamous frame 313 from the Zapruder film, supposedly the split-second the fatal head shot impacted his head, but I don't believe in the authenticity of this image, and neither should you. 

So, what exactly is that supposed to be? It can't be the moment of impact because a full metal jacket bullet would enter the head cleanly. There certainly would not be an explosion at the site of entry. If anything, there would be an explosion at the site of exit. So, is that what we are supposed to be seeing? But, look at the location, It's centered on the right temple area. And if JFK had an exit explosion there, how could his autopsy photo look like it does? That area is intact. 

Witnesses did say that his head "exploded." They used that word. But, they didn't say it exploded there. Officer Cheyney said that he was splattered with JFK's brain matter from the blow-out in back. I think the word he used was "soaked." But, he was behind JFK on the left side. So how could there be an explosion at the right front? 

That red splotch isn't real. That has to be paint; paint that is still on the original Zapruder film, to this day, if it still exists. But, there's no paint on the copies. And that explains why the National Archives was willing to send copies out to anyone the Zapruders designated, but when the family finally asked for the film back, that's when they found out that they didn't own it at all.  

But, what story were they trying to tell when they painted that red splotch on the frame? And I think that, most likely, "they" were  Dino Brugioni and his team at the CIA's "National Photographic Interpretation Center."  Just think: he wrote a book called Photographic Fakery, which I have and have read twice, in which he shows all these examples of photographic fakery starting with the Civil War, but then when he gets to the JFK assassination and the Zapruder film, he went on, at length, about why all those images are real and authentic. Methinks he defended it too much. 

But, why did they do it this way, giving us this dramatic red splotch? And the red has to be blood, right? It isn't muzzle flash, not when the gun was so far away. And, it was followed by the infamous "back and to the left" movement of JFK's head, that we heard Kevin Costner, as Jim Garrison, say over and over in JFK the movie. 

If you believe that the fatal head shot came from behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll, as many do, including me, then the location of the red splotch does correspond approximately to where he was hit, and the movement of his head does correspond to the movement that followed. You can read Head Shot, by naval physicist G,. Paul Chambers, who explains why, according to Physics, that has to be true.

https://www.amazon.com/Head-Shot-Science-Behind-Assassination/dp/1616145617

But, the question is: why did they leave all that in the Zapruder film if they were going to claim that the fatal head shot came from the rear?

I believe they left it in to authenticate the whole film. They knew, in advance, that once it went public that conspiracy researchers and the general public would think that the shot came from the front. They knew that they would use the film to vouch for that. And that is what happened. Remember, the HSCA was formed in response to the public outcry that followed the airing of the Zapruder film. So, why did Dino and them do it that way? If they were going to spend years altering the Zapruder film, why do it that way?

They did it that way because they knew that that is what would attract focus and attention. And they had a plan for it. They were going to claim that even though his head moved back and to the left, that he was still shot from the rear, from the 6th floor window, that under some circumstances, a shot from the rear can do that to an object, such as a head. It's no more absurd than NIST telling us that "office fires" can cause a steel-framed building to collapse. But, they decided that they would rather deal with that, and the fallout from that, if it would authenticate the film, and keep people from focusing on what they cut out, which was JFK getting shot in the back high on the hill. 

Look: they figured that people can be bamboozled about Physics because that's over their head. It's too complex; too brainy. But simple Arithmetic is something that anyone can do, even a moron. So, people can count, and if they knew that there was a shot that missed that grazed James Tague in the cheek, and a shot that hit Kennedy in the back high on the hill, and then another shot that hit Kennedy behind the sign, and even if they said that that shot also hit Connally and did all the damage to him, that you have to leave one more shot to account for the fatal head shot, and that means 4 shots. And they knew that Oswald could not possibly have gotten off 4 shots, even theoretically. 

So, the bottom line is that they would rather argue with researchers about the Physics of it than the simple Arithmetic of it. They had to get rid of that shot to the back. There was no room for it in the count. So, they did major surgery on the Zapruder film, moving the sign up so that JFK got to it right away. The limo rounded the corner, passed the Depository, and then right away it got to the sign, and JFK disappeared behind it: unhurt. And he emerged from it: hurt. That is the story they wanted to tell. It's the story they needed to tell. 

So, they left the back and to the left in to keep the conspiracy crowd preoccupied, to keep them away from noticing what they did earlier in the film to shorten the distance to the sign, but why did they add the red splotch? It's because the red splotch covers up what was actually shown. It's like a curtain. Apparently, the raw film really showed that the shot came from behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll. Even though the red splotch looks bad, apparently, the raw film looked worse- from their perspective. 

So, it was all very calculated. After much consideration, they realized it was their best recourse to do what they did. At least, it saved the Single Bullet Theory, and they knew damn well that they were f_cked without that. 

 

   

 

I just learned that Robert David Steele, the former CIA officer, whom I have talked to about Oswald, is an advocate for something I have been saying a long time: that Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was murdered. You can read about it here:

https://phibetaiota.net/2020/08/mongoose-did-elliot-roosevelt-murder-joseph-p-kennedy-jr/

Steele emphasizes that it just so happened that Elliot Roosevelt, the son of the President, was flying the follow-up plane?  When you think about how vast the U.S. Military was during WW2, for that juxtaposition of famous names to just happen seems unlikely. And I didn't care for Roosevelt's remark afterwards, that "they must have tripped a wife."  Seems rather flippant, doesn't it? But, the fact is that no official cause of the disaster was ever determined- or even sought. Does that bother you? It bothers me. 

And if it's true that Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was murdered, then think about what it means. It means that the idea of killing Kennedys existed long before JFK became President. And since JFK did exactly what his older brother intended to do: run for Congress, did they consider killing JFK then? Don't brush it off. They may have considered it. But, they may have decided that it was just too risky, that it might generate renewed interest in what happened to his brother.   

Let's face it: if both brothers died in a freak accident, it's got to make you wonder if they were accidents.

But, by 1963, enough time had passed, and the "lone nut assassin" was so very different, that they thought no one would associate the two, and they were right.

And if you have reluctance about this, just remember that the facts in this case stink. We're not talking about reopening an investigation; we're talking about opening it. 

 

I am very pleased that My Stretch of Texas Ground just received another film festival recognition. It is now an official nominee for Best Feature Film in the Golden State Film Festival.

What an outstanding festival run the film has had, exceeding my expectations. As someone pointed out to me today, in a friendly way, the film is certainly "controversial." That's true, but, it is also very bold, courageous, daring, original, and most of all, impassioned. And the way I feel is that if movies aren't going to be impassioned, there's no point in making them.

My focus now is on the completion of His Stretch of Texas Ground and the making of The Pro Bono Watchman. And I earnestly hope that both those films do well. That's because if they do, I will get to stay in the movie business and make more movies. I like to make movies. I like being around actors. I like experiencing their art and creativity first-hand. And I like the whole creative process of making a movie. I have another script already finished to follow Pro Bono, and it's ready to go. But, the other films will have to do well first for it to be financially possible.

I'm 70 now, but I feel good, and I feel like I could go on making movies for years, and I hope I can. But, even if I do, My Stretch of Texas Ground will always be my first love because it's a movie that stands up for the innocent victims of war.

This is my third and last installment of my review of Twenty Six Seconds, the book about the Zapruder film by Alexandra Zapruder. 

And, I must say that this last part of the book was the most interesting. Reading it gave me a very clear perspective of what happened, and I'll lay it out for you.

So, LIFE magazine bought the film from Zapruder immediately after the shooting for $150,000 paid over 6 years. What did they do with it? Mainly, they kept people from seeing it. It seems to be the primary reason they had for owning it. 

They published carefully selected and prepared frames as early as November 29 and then again on October 2, 1964. But, they had custody of the film for 12 years, and that isn't much. They NEVER let anyone see the film. And they were challenged in court over it, which they fought. In a word, they successfully prevented anyone from seeing it. 

However, there were bootleg copies that got generated. For instance, they sent the film to an image processing company in New Jersey to get the 8mm changed to 16mm and then 32mm. And the guy who did it kept a copy for himself. 

And the story goes that Robert Grodin started working there, and he discovered it and made a copy. And ultimately, he showed it to the whole country with Dick Gregory and Geraldo Rivera. 

And there were researchers, including Harold Weisberg, who were clamoring to get the film and threatening legal action. So, LIFE started feeling like it was like a hot potato, and they wanted to get rid of it.

So, they offered to sell it back to the Zapruder family for $60,000, and the Zapruders agreed to pay it. But then LIFE changed their mind and said make it a dollar. And the Zapruder, understandably, accepted those terms. 

But, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that the Zapruders weren't actually going to get the film. They were just going to get the rights to it; not the actual film. the actual film had to go to the National Archives. 

So, the Zapruders had their own cottage industry commercializing the Zapruder film. They started renting it for as high as $30,000 for one use. And they were excoriated for being moneygrubbers. But, in defense of what her father, Henry Zapruder, the son of Abraham, did, Alexandra made two points: first, that they made it available for nothing to non-profit organizations and educators. And second, it was the fault of Zapruder's widow, Lily, who was then married to another man. She, according to Alexandra, was the one who ordered her son Henry to milk that cow for all it was worth.  

And frankly, I think anyone who faults them for what they did is just jealous. This is America, where making a profit isn't a crime. It was pure capitalism, which we believe in, right? 

So, LMH corporation had quite an industry to themselves. And they had the National Archives doing all the leg work for them.  The Zapruders took the orders and the money, while the National Archives fulfilled for them by sending a copy of the Zapruder film to their customers. 

Is it necessary for me to point out that a business relationship like that, between a private corporation and the federal government, never existed before or since?

But then, for reasons that I can't recall, the Zapruders tired of it and decided that they wanted to do it all themselves. So, they politely told the National Archives that they wanted their film back. 

Can you guess what happened? The National Archives politely told them that they were not getting it back, and they were never getting it back. And they didn't leave it at that. That's what led to the JFK Act and the formation of the ARRB. And the ARRB officially declared that the government was seizing the Zapruder film for all time via "eminent domain." 

Now, why would the government not give the Zapruders the film? 

It's because it was altered. And no, that's not the reason Alexandra Zapruder gave, and far from it.

Alexandra Zapruder totally supports official history. It is her occupation to support official history. Right out of university, she was made a founding administrator of the United States Holocaust  Museum. Her Masters degree was in education, not history. So, did they choose her because of her historical name? 

And ironically, there is a connection between the two historical events: World War II and the JFK assassination because JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was a controversial figure during WWII for his alleged anti-Semitism and alleged coddling of the Nazi government. I'll go on record in saying that I think JPK's objective was to try to prevent a war which went on to kill 65 million people. 

And it wasn't just JPK Sr. JPK Jr. was known to have given anti-war speeches at Harvard leading up to the war. Of course, once war broke out, he became a heroic naval aviator. And even JFK himself had traveled across Germany as a reporter for Colliers magazine and written glowingly about Hitler and the German people. And as the story goes, Louis Steven Witt claimed to the HSCA to have been Umbrella Man and claimed to have exhibited his umbrella to JFK to remind him of how Chamberlain acquiesced to Hitler at Munich, as if JFK was supposed to get that just from seeing an umbrella. 

I realize that I have gone off on a tangent here, but the point is that Alexandra Zapruder was no stranger to historical controversy. And just as she supports every bit of the official history of World War II, she supports every bit of the official history of the JFK assassination, as did her whole family, as did Zapruder himself. 

And that is exactly why LIFE magazine and the National Archives wanted the Zapruders to "own" the Zapruder film. They knew that the Zapruders would vouch for the authenticity of the film. But, there is really no way they could have. The only who had seen it was Lily, I presume. And according to Alexandra, her mother was going into Alzheimer's disease, though she was with it enough to know that she wanted her family to reap the financial windfall from the film. So obviously, with that attitude, she was going to say that it was the real thing. 

According to Alexandra, her father Henry had no interest in the JFK assassination. He had no interest in discussing it- let alone debating it. She said he was a man of many interests, but that wasn't one of them. 

So, there was no one in the Zapruder family who was going to dispute the authenticity of the film, and that is what made them valuable.

Now, you know as well as I do, that there are many people who believe that the Z-film was altered. Of course, I'm one of them. And I feel that I have identified one of the biggest alterations of all, that others missed, that the limo reaches the freeway sign way too soon in the Z-film. It passes the Depository and then right away, JFK is vanishing behind the sign. That's bull! They cut out a huge swath in which JFK was hit in the back and was riding down the hill having been shot in the back. 

And, it's a fact that the Z-film shows that JFK stopped smiling and waving before he disappeared behind the sign. Why? Because he was shot in the back.

But most people don't notice that. To be honest, I don't know that anyone noticed it before I did. And since people don't notice it, the "story" of the Z-film is that JFK was fine and dandy until he disappeared behind the sign. And then everything happened behind the sign. Everything, that is, except the fatal head shot. 

But, there is a terribly wrong assumption that alterationists want to make, which is: that all the alterations were done that weekend or soon thereafter. No, no, no, no. It took years for them to alter that film. It may have taken advancements in film technology for them to do it. 

LIFE magazine held on to the film for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975. Then, in 1975, they were ready for the world to see it, though they wanted the Zapruders to showcase it. But why 12years? Why not 10 years? Wasn't that enough? Why not 8 years? Or 6 years?

It was 12 years because it took 12 years to get every last i dotted and t crossed in the altered film. It took them 12 years to do enough to the film to feel confident that it would tell the right story and pass muster with researchers and the public.

So, I assume that, if not 12 years, it took the better part of 12 years for them to get the Z-film altered to their satisfaction. 

But, remember how it was done in those days: with paint. They actually had to get artists to paint the frames. And obviously, paint can be detected on a film frame. So, there was no way they were ever going to give or even show the original film to the Zapruders- or anyone else. 

Of course, LIFE Magazine was in on it. According to the book, 3 copies were made the first night: 1 that went to the FBI, and 2 that went to the SS.  But, later in the book, she admitted that the second copy for the SS really went to the CIA. You know, Dino? Dino Brugioni? Good ol' Dino and the National Photographic Interpretation Center that he headed. It's very likely that that's where the dirty work was done. But, it certainly wasn't done in days, weeks, or even months. It took years. And it's very likely that nothing of this magnitude was ever attempted before. 

So, there was no way the U.S. government was going to turn the original Zapruder film back to the Zapruders. It contained evidence of criminal falsification of evidence in a criminal case. And that began a multi-years long dispute over the "just compensation" that the Zapruders were entitled to for the film.

And the U.S. government fought hard to make it a small sum. They started by offering $750,000 while the Zapruders wanted $40 million. That's quite a gap, wouldn't you say? But, the government finally agreed to enter binding arbitration (which was outside its own courts) but to do so, they insisted that the Zapruders accept a ceiling of $30 million and a floor of nothing. The Zapruders accepted that. 

So, the arbitration began, and both sides had high-powered lawyers. 

But, why did the U.S. government fight so hard to make the sum small? After all, the U.S. government prints whatever money it wants. $30 million, $30 billion, it's all just accounting entries. Very soon, we'll be talking about a $30 trillion national debt. And it's just going to keep growing and growing. But, the point is that they fought so hard not to save the taxpayer's money but because their whole argument was that there was nothing special about the original Zapruder film, that with so many copies now out and floating around, that its importance had dwindled to nothing.   

In the end, the arbiters settled on an amount of $16 million, and that is what the Zapruders got. 

So today, the original Zapruder film sits in the National Archives. Or does it? I shall leave you with the thought that they may very well have destroyed it. They couldn't show it to anyone, so why keep it? Why have to guard it 24/7/365 year after year? 

So, I think it's likely they destroyed the original Zapruder film. But if I'm wrong about that, I'm not wrong about this: that they are no more going to let anyone see the original Zapruder film than they are going to let anyone into Fort Knox to count the gold that isn't there. 

 

 

This is a song for Valentine's Day, and it's one of the greatest love songs ever written: Till There Was You by Meredith Willson. Most people recognize it from The Music Man, which came out in 1963, but Willson wrote the song in 1950 and played it with his orchestra throughout the 1950s. The Beatles loved this song and recorded it several times. They were inspired by Peggy Lee's version of it from 1961.   

But here now is the lovely and talented Hannah Vaughn singing it, with Paul Popa on guitar, and Yours Truly on piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_TtCV3cqpU&feature=youtu.be

This is Part 2 of my analysis of Twenty Six Seconds, the book by Zapruder's granddaughter Alexandra Zapruder. 

So, Abe went home with the film, even though three copies had been made for the government: two for the SS and one for the FBI. And late that night, he got a call from Dick Stolley of LIFE magazine, who wanted to buy the film. Zapruder had arranged to show the film to some federal agents the next day at his company, Jennifer Junior, and he told Stolley he could come.

Stolley did, and he said he was stunned, that it was the most dramatic moment of his career. 

Ms. Zapruder described it this way: "They watched the film in silence until the President's head exploded in a shower of red." 

But, it isn't a shower of red. It's more like a splotch of red, the kind that could be painted on, and it's not what a bullet would do. A bullet would enter the head. It might or might not go through it. And afterwards, there would be blood oozing from the entrance wound, but nothing like what we see in the Zapruder film with the big red explosion.

And think about it: if that was visible to Zapruder's camera, then it was visible to the eyes of the spectators, and nobody reported seeing such a thing. 

And what's so hard to watch about a red splotch? It isn't gore. It's not as though you're seeing exposed brain. That would be gore. And there was exposed brain. Officer Cheyney said he was soaked in JFK's brain matter. So, why don't we see JFK's brain actually exploding in the Zapruder film? I mean: actually being "blown off." 

Stolley, on behalf of LIFE, paid Zapruder $25,000 a year for the film for 6 years. So, $150,000 total. That's worth well over a million dollars today.  Zapruder donated the first payment to the Tippit family, but it wasn't his idea.  He was told that it would look good for PR.  It was his lawyer, Sam Passman, who urged Zapruder to donate it to Tippit's family. And I don't fault Zapruder a bit for any of this. It was nice of him to donate anything. I'm pointing this out because throughout the book, Ms. Zapruder defends her grandfather from the charge of being mercenary and exploitative, that right away he was out to make a buck off his film. She insists his primary motive was to find the right home for the film, where it would be presented with dignity, and showing respect for the dead, etc. 

But, the deal was that no copy remained with him, and that was smart. They should have done the same thing with Mary Moorman. They should have gotten someone to pay her a large sum for her photo and taken it off her hands completely. That way, they would not have had to keep going back to her. She claimed that authorities repeatedly borrowed her photo from her. But why? They made copies the first day. They even made a negative of it the first day. So, why did they have to see her original again and again for? Because: they were going to alter it. What good would it do to alter the copies if she still had the unaltered original? But, they didn't make that mistake with Zapruder. 

So, what did LIFE magazine do with the film? They published carefully selected frames on November 29, just a week later, and then again in Oct 2, 1964. I have the latter one, and I just ordered the former. In the latter, they published one attractive frame of JFK waving and smiling at the crowd before he disappears behind the freeway sign. I've shown you that if you look closely at the film, you can see that JFK stopped waving before he reached the sign, and he put his hand over his face. But, since no one reported that he did that, I have to think they painted the hand in, and it looks painted. 

The alteration of the Zapruder film must have been done progressively and not all at once. I'm sure they started messing with it right away, but there is no way they were finished by November 29, 1963. So, at that point, they were going to be very careful about which frames they allowed the public to see. Yes, to the smiling/waving one, and no to the ones which showed he stopped waving and looked distressed before he reached the sign.  

But, what LIFE magazine did with the Zapruder film mostly was keep other people from seeing it. CBS tried very hard to get it from them, but they wouldn't budge. Others tried too.

So why did LIFE buy it from Zapruder? Did they really do it with the goal of making money from it? No. They bought it mainly to get the film away from Zapruder and to make sure that no one else got it. LIFE magazine did it as an agent of the government. LIFE was in bed with the U.S. intelligence agencies. It looked a lot better if a private corporation bought the film from Zapruder rather than for the government to just demand that he forfeit it so that they could start altering it. And remember: he gave it to the government for free. So, it wasn't about getting the film; it was about getting it away from him so that they could alter it. 

You probably know that in 1968, Jim Garrison forced LIFE magazine to show the Zapruder film to the grand jury in the Clay Shaw case, and "back and to the left" became a household term. But, stop thinking that there was any loss of control. They knew exactly what they were doing. BY LEAVING IN THE BACKWARD MOTION OF JFK'S HEAD, THEY WERE AUTHETICATING THE ENTIRE ZAPRUDER FILM. That was like the stamp of authenticity on the grounds that, "If we were going to alter anything, we would have altered that, and since we didn't, it means we altered nothing." That's what they got for letting the world see "back and to the left." 

And then, they just did a few experiments with watermelons and whatnot to claim that, shot from the rear, a head could still go back and to the left. But, stop thinking about what they lost, and start thinking about what they gained: which is everyone believing that JFK wasn't shot until he got behind the sign. 

Ms. Zapruder went through the story of how Robert Groden got involved in the public release of the film. The story goes that he was working at an imaging company with a guy named Moses Weitzman who had been hired by LIFE to convert the Z-film to 16 mm and then 32 mm. And that resulted in more copies being made, one of which he kept "as a sample of his expertise." The way Ms. Zapruder put it is that Groden just accessed it himself, that it was there, and he just helped himself to it. I don't know what Groden claims.   

This is where the story gets weird because LIFE magazine started feeling antsy about owning the film, and they wanted to get rid of it. Their first thought was to donate it to the National Archives. Zapruder was dead by then, but they had to run it by his family. LIFE wanted to get rid of the film because "there was no way to use it in a tasteful way." Are you buying that? 

Robert Groden was going around showing the Zapruder film to groups, large and small. Then, he was invited on the Geraldo Rivera program, where it was shown to  the whole country. I think it's interesting that LIFE had copyrighted the Zapruder film. So, why didn't they sue Groden and Rivera for copyright infringement?  

Instead, LIFE felt compelled to unload the film. They offered to sell it back to the Zapruder family for $60,000, and if they wouldn't pay, they would just give it to the National Archives. But, the Zapruder family was represented by Henry Zapruder, Abe's son, who was a Harvard-educated tax attorney. But, according to the author, it wasn't Henry's desire to drive a hard bargain with LIFE. She put the blame on her grandmother, Lil, Abe's widow. She said that she was the money grubber. And she gave marching orders to her son Henry to deal and haggle but get that film back at the lowest price possible. 

According to Ms. Zapruder, her family was prepared to pay the $60,000 to LIFE for the film, but then LIFE said they wanted the price to be $1. I'm going to quote her now: "I never understood why LIFE gave the film back to our family for $1."

But, she went on to say that NBC newscaster Tom Snyder was badmouthing both LIFE and the Zapruder family. So, LIFE, wanting to smash all claims that they were being mercenary about this national treasure, just gave it back to the Zapruders for a buck. 

OK, now, I am going to finish this section by telling you what I think happened. I think LIFE magazine wanted to unload the Zapruder film because they knew it was altered, highly altered, and they were involved in altering it. But, the public would never suspect the Zapruder family of altering it. So, if the Zapruder family owned it and vouched for it, and said that they got it back in the same condition it was in when they turned it over, that would legitimize it. It would look better.  It would sell better. The story of the Zapruder film, that JFK wasn't hit until he was hidden behind the sign, would sell better. And that was worth much more than $60,000 or $600,000 or $6,000,000.

It wasn't about profit. It was about history, and what the history of what happened on November 22, 1963 would be. 

   

 

I haven't commented about Afghanistan in a long time, and with everything that's happened; the disputed election, the turmoil that followed, plus Covid, it's no wonder Afghanistan isn't front page news.

However, as I expected, the Biden administration has announced that they don't feel obliged to abide by the terms of the peace accord that Trump signed with the Taliban, and it's very likely that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan- indefinitely. 

First, note something of great importance: The whole world should realize now: that signing an accord with the United States only applies to the current administration. Trump did it too, of course. The first thing he did was denounce the peace accord that Obama had with Iran. His doing that, and other provocations, almost took us to war with Iran. It got very close, and it very easily could have happened.

So, Biden is just doing the same thing that Trump did, except he's doing it to Trump.

But, let's look at the situation in Afghanistan. It's a disaster. The war has continued. The Taliban has not let up its violence against the Afghan government. But, they never said they would. They said that the peace accord was between them and the U.S. They never said they were going to stop fighting the Afghan government, although they did say they would engage in talks with them, which they have.

But, nothing good has come of it. Progress has been zero. And the Taliban have made it clear that, basically, the Afghan government has to dissolve. They want a new government, and one that is properly Islamic. They want a theocracy- something as theocratic as the government of Iran.  

But, the Biden administration is in a spot because if they don't get out by May, then the Taliban may very well start attacking Americans again. And there are only 2500 of them there. So, their ability to defend themselves is limited. Therefore, if Biden is really bent on breaking the treaty (and he'll say that the Taliban broke it) he is probably going to have to increase the troop levels again. 

So, as we approach the 20th anniversary of this disastrous war (on October 7)  it may be that escalation is what is going to mark it. 

So, we are at a crucial turning point, a fork in the road. Are we going to get out, or are we going to inflame and enlarge the war? I regret to say that I think it's going to be the latter. 

  

I'd like to point something out about the Corona virus vaccine, if you're considering getting it. They're admitting that 36 people have developed severe immune thombocytopenia after getting it. One of them, a 56 year old male obstetrician, developed symptoms 3 days later and died two weeks after that. 

Thombocytes are another term for platelets, which are blood cells that enable your blood to clot. And really, they are just cellular fragments. Clots form because of "platelet aggregation." 

We hear so many bad things about "blood clots" that it's easy to forget sometimes that without the ability clot your blood, you're dead. 

And it's been known for a long time that platelets are very vulnerable to drug toxicity. If you get out the PDR and start reading about the adverse effects of drugs, you'll see that "thrombocytopenia" is one of the most common effects of drug toxicity. 

Thrombocytopenia means a deficiency of platelets, where the number falls below and outside of the normal range. Obviously, there can be all different degrees of thrombocytopenia, and mild cases may go either unnoticed or otherwise have very mild symptoms, such as the person bruises a little more easily.

But, in this case, we're talking about a severe thrombocytopenia. The male obstetrician who died died of a brain hemorrhage. 

But, here is what the government said about it:

"Officials with the FDA and CDC said that they were looking into the reports, but that so far, rates of the condition in vaccinated people did not appear higher than the rates normally found in the U.S. population, so the cases could be coincidental."

So, they are saying that out of 31 million people who were vaccinated as of the end of January, that only 37 developed this severe, life-threatening reaction, and that if you looked at 31 million unvaccinated people, that you're likely to find as many as 37 cases of severe immune thrombocytopenia. 

I don't know if that's true, but let's just assume that it is. There is still a big difference. If we looked at 31 million people from the general population, none of whom were injected with the Covid vaccine, and we found 37 who had severe immune thrombocytopenia, we would find that they developed it at different times and under different circumstances. It would not be that all 37 suddenly developed the condition right after getting a vaccine. To my mind, the temporal association with the vaccine makes the likelihood of it being a coincidence about zero.

I'll give you the link to the article, so you can read it yourself.  It's a free country, and you can do what you want. But, this is Dr. Cinque telling you that I am NOT going to get that Covid vaccine. I am much more afraid of the vaccine than I am of the virus. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/few-covid-vaccine-recipients-developed-133911410.html

 

  

This is going to be a multi-part discussion of the book Twenty-Six Seconds, A Personal History of the Zapruder Film, by Alexandra Zapruder, the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder. It was published in 2016. 

First, let me point out that it was surreal for me to read this book because the most important thing anyone can say about the Zapruder film is that it was highly altered. And she wrote practically nothing about that. She did say that there were four frames that went notoriously missing. But, she said it was no mystery, that LIFE magazine, who became the owner of the film, accidentally destroyed those frames. And, she pointed out that since there are 18.3 frames per second, it represented just a small fraction of a second that went missing. And actually, according to her, it was Abraham Zapruder, himself, who said that. 

And by the way, she doesn't have any memory of him because he died when she was very young. And it's the same for me concerning my paternal grandfather, Ralph Cinque. He died when I was two, and I don't have any memory of him. 

Alexandra Zapruder's background is in education. She has a Master's degree in it from Harvard. And she is on the staff of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington and has been since it was founded. 

But, when I talk about the alteration of the Zapuder film, I am not talking about 4 missing frames. I am talking about the complete revamping of the film.  Because, as she says herself throughout the book, the story of the Zapruder film is that everything happened behind the sign, the Stemmons Freeway sign, that JFK was fine- he was smiling and waving- until he reached that sign. And then, behind the sign, everything happened.  Everything, that is, except the fatal head shot. 

So, the story of the Zapruder film is that the sign was transforming, that JFK not only underwent horrific physical trauma behind that sign, but that he emerged a completely different person, in which his consciousness, his awareness, and his ability to react and respond were radically altered. It all happened behind the sign.

And I want to stress that, unfortunately, no one other than me, talks about the change in JFK's mental status, pre-sign and post-sign. He emerges from behind that sign not only physically traumatized but mentally impaired. WHY IS IT THAT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HIS OBVIOUS MENTAL IMPAIRMENT? 

JFK passes behind that sign a man and emerges from it a child. Jackie is like his mother- not his wife. JFK is rendered childlike and helpless- to the extreme. He is a different person than he was before the sign. 

And, the fact is that it's not exactly true that he was smiling and waving  until he passed behind the sign. If you look closely, you can see in the Zapruder film that he stopped smiling and waving and put his hand over his face. Nobody talks about that- except me. And to put it mildly, it pisses me off. 

Nobody, but nobody, reported that he did that. And I don't believe he did. I think it was painted on, and believe me, they had photo artists who could do it. I have been told that by modern-day photo editors, who use Photoshop.  So, why did they do it? They did it because he was already shot, in the back, and the look on his face showed it. That's why they had to cover up his face with his hand.

So, the "story" of the Zapruder film is a lie. It is NOT true that JFK reached that sign intact. He was shot in the back high on the hill. It happened just a little past the Depository, right before the Croft photo was taken.

This photo, too, underwent massive alteration to hide the fact that Kennedy was shot. But, I won't go into that here. 

So, in the extant Zapruder film, the Stemmons freeway sign is like the magician's curtain, and everything that happens, happens behind that sign. Keep in mind that JFK was shot in the throat behind that sign. There can be no doubt about that. But, the shot to his back was a separate shot that occurred much higher on the hill. 

So, the purpose of the Zapruder film is to sell the Single Bullet Theory, and a tremendous amount of altering and excising was done to get to that. 

 

But, getting back to Ms. Zapruder's book, she claims that, from the beginning, Abraham Zapruder wanted to get the film into federal hands, either the Secret Service or the FBI, that his first instinct was NOT to sell it, but to give it to the government. And by the way, he was a very patriotic American who appreciated this country because he was an immigrant from Ukraine, where his family was persecuted for being Jewish in Tsarist Russia. And then, life in Soviet-dominated, Ukraine was no picnic either. It isn't talked about much in this country, but Stalin sought to and did starve Ukrainians in the 1930s in what is known as the Holodomor. The most widely accepted death toll is about 4 million, but some claim that it was 12 million. You know, Joe Stalin? Uncle Joe? Our buddy from World War 2? He did that. 

But, I digress. Many times, I have pointed out that all amateur images from the JFK assassination were confiscated by the government. Nobody just went home with their film. Supposedly, Babushka Lady did, you know I don't believe that either. BL was an insider, cloaked in her long coat and scarf to hide her identity- it was her disguise- and it was one of her pictures that was converted into the picture that we have always known as the Moorman photo. But again, I digress. 

But, in Zapruder's case, it was none other than Secret Service Agent Forest Sorrels that took Zapruder's film, and he's the one who got it developed at Kodak. I tell you, Forrest Sorrels was like the Forrest Gump of the JFK assassination because he always showed up at crucial times. He got to ride in the car that went ahead of the Presidential limo. He got to take the Zapruder film from Zapruder, and he was the first to interview Jack Ruby up on the 5th floor of the DPD. 

So, Sorrell got to Kodak, where it took an hour to develop it. So, what did they see? 

The first thing I have to discuss is the quality of the film. One of the first people to see it was Kodak staff supervisor Jack Harrison, and he said that the film was "needle sharp." Erwin Schwartz, who as Zapruder's business partner in the dress manufacturing business,  said that the images were "the clearest, most beautiful you ever saw." "That last shot, you see his head come off, I mean you could see it so clear."

Well, the images in Zapruder film are certainly not "needle sharp" but I believe that they were. But, we don't see JFK's head come off.

Here's 313.

That's not his head coming off. That's his head being shot. We're seeing a red thing over his head, and it doesn't make sense. Other people have been shot in the head, and you never see that effect. Show me one other photographic capture of a person being shot in the head that looks like that.

So, I don't buy the red splotch. Leastways, I have my doubts about it. But regardless, are we all agreed that we're not seeing his head come off? And note that this is not a "needle sharp" image or anything close to it. They deliberately blurred JFK assassination images.

So, in 314 the red splotch is smaller, but still we don't see his head coming off.

Let's jump next to 316.

Still no head coming off.

Let's jump to 320.

Finally 328.

The point is that we don't see Kennedy's head coming off in the Zapruder film, even though many people reported seeing it, including those who first saw the Zapruder film. 

After developing, exactly three duplicates of the film were made. None of the duplicates contained the visual information between the sprocket holes. After that, Abe and Erwin drove to the DPD with the original and 3 copies. Two copies went to the Secret Service; one staying with the Secret Service in Dallas and the other being put on a plane and sent to the Secret Service in Washington. The remaining copy went to the FBI. The original, as we'll discuss at length, wound up in the hands of LIFE magazine. Did Zapruder keep a copy for himself? No, he did not. And as you will find out, that was NOT going to be allowed. This ends Part 1. I'll continue soon.  

What a day! Spent at the recording studio laying down the vocals and electric guitar for You're Loving Me Lately, a song I wrote for The Pro Bono Watchman. Our vocalist Christy Mims sang beautifully to what is, admittedly, a difficult song to sing. And my good friend Paul Popa played the electric guitar with a lot of soul. I already have the MP3 of the three of us with me on piano. But, on Thursday, Rick McRae will add acoustic guitar and violin, and Terry Hale will add standing bass. And that will be it. I think we are going to have a very nice song.